Well, some of you know this and some of you don’t. Last August I was diagnosed with Stage 4 Non- Small Cell Aednocarsonoma of the lung. It’s considered 100% fatal and 8 month median survival. That was 11 months ago. Since then I’ve been working on custom treatments and it appears to have worked. Possibly a complete cure. Here’s a letter I just sent out.

Dear Friends and Family,

As you all know from my previous announcements that I have been working on designing a custom immunotherapy treatment that has never been tried before, and the hard part as usual, getting the doctors to do it. Well – I finally got the treatment and – it appears as if it worked. And I stress the word “appears” because it’s looks like it’s going to take about 2 months before imaging is going to show what’s happening. But my cancer symptoms are gone.

I am in a state of stunned disbelief. Too early to believe it – too late not to believe it.

On Monday June 19 I got an infusion of ipilimumab which is an immunotherapy drug. 2 days later I got a series of 3 radiation treatments (21st thru 23rd). Dosage, 3 fractions of 9gy xrays from Varian Trilogy set at 9MV. These treatment we unusual in that instead of irradiating the whole tumor, I asked that they just burn a disk in the center of the main tumor leaving the rest of the tumor undamaged. This request was very counter intuitive in radiology because they are trained to kill every cancer cell they can possibly hit and it took a lot of work to get them to deliberately leave tumor undamaged.

But that was important because I was turning the tumor into a school, not a battlefield, where I was teaching my immune system what the cancer looked like (antigens) and classify it as an enemy. By using partial radiation I created an environment where white blood cells in my immune system could interact with dead cancer and learn it.

4 days after treatment I started getting a reaction. I was queasy, low energy, aches and pains, chills. When I got home I had a fever of 101, and it occurred to me, is this the fever I was hoping for?

Fever indicates that I’m having an immune response. My immune system is fighting something. Was it attacking the cancer?

So I took a hot bath and used a heating pad to increase the fever and got it up to 103. I wanted to create heat shock proteins and signal the battle was on. Wednesday still had fever and was rather out of it. Thursday morning fever broke and all my cancer symptoms were gone.

I have aednocarsonoma and the aedno part of the name means “mucus secreting”. On Thursday the mucus went to almost none. I had been coughing up a lot even before I was diagnosed last August. I went out and sawed limbs off a tree, hard work, and didn’t cough up anything. At night when I lay down and in the morning when I get up, almost nothing. Energy is good. On Saturday I did a 4 mile hike. 2 miles up hill and 2 down. It was like walking up the stairs of a 60 story building, but without the stairs. Yes I was out of breath and I coughed, but didn’t cough anything up.

If I have a mucus secreting cancer and have no mucus, is the cancer dead? Why do I no longer have symptoms?

However …

I have no hard information and I don’t actually know what happened but something extraordinary occurred and it is so easy to want to declare victory, but the easiest person to fool is myself and I would like to see a doctor with a before and after image showing the cancer gone. I don’t have that and I’m not going to get it soon. So – stunned disbelief is as good as it gets, for now.

I have to say that although I knew this should work, I didn’t expect it to actually work. I thought the most likely outcome was failure. And I definitely didn’t expect that I might have gone from having cancer to possibly cancer free in just 10 days. I had planned to repeat this process at least 2 more times changing the radiation and drugs around. But now I don’t know if I have any live tumor to attack anymore and no point in hitting dead tumor with xrays. At this point there are no plans for any future treatment.

Often when the abscopal effect occurs it is a “complete response” which means cured. My immune system might kill every last cancer cell. And I may have created a vaccine against my own cancer which will prevent recurrence. Note the word “may”.

The implications are stunning. If this did work it could work for any cancer for anyone. It’s all low tech off the shelf stuff where the secret sauce is timing and partial radiation of the tumor. Did I find the cure for cancer? Might be a Nobel Prize in it for me and a movie about my life. I’m thinking Hugh Jackman can play my part, but this is the optimistic thinking I’m trying to avoid.

Anyhow, I’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea that I might not die soon. And also wondering if I missed something and I just kicked the can down the road. But I’m 11 months into a cancer where median survival is 8 months and I’m still climbing mountains 3 months past my sell by date. So that in itself is victory.

I was so sad to hear you had cancer when JCD announced it on No Agenda regarding someone taking over the business, so I am SO HAPPY to hear the news that you may be cured!! I’m really hoping it’s a complete cure, both for yourself (natch!), and the huge implications it could have for cancer treatment in general.

No it is true. The cost cutting measures in the bill are very severe. The architects knew it would be controversial, so they included a provision that the IPAB cannot be repealed or amended, except for a very narrow time window with a supermajority vote.
Obama complained that we are spending so much money on the last six months of life(plus seniors didn’t vote for him).
Even Bobbo endorsed death panels on this site within the last week.

Just to clarify what’s not obvious in the statement: I only want to make what is going on right now in various different formats and ways and acceptability and comfort levels into a formal standardized LEGAL system that is recognized, promoted, and accepted.

EG: we don’t give $1mm heart/lung transplants to 79 year olds.

What I advocate for is deciding how much of unlimited demand for healthcare is going to be funded and then determine how to spend that money for the most good.

EG: no kidney transplants as long as all kiddies everywhere in the USA aren’t getting all the immunizations that are established as baseline. I do assume that is the case today….. so kidney transplants are allowed.

Its rare anyone has the ability to delve into the science of an issue and look for new approaches. You have a nugget though: if standard treatment DOES NOT WORK…………then try ANYTHING ELSE. Especially when there is a sound scientific/medical basis for it.

You ought to write this up “thoroughly” as a long article for publication somewhere…get it into the public. Who knows what medical researcher somewhere might pick up on it and try it with variation?

So many interesting questions. Not the most important, but to me very interesting: the discussion had with your Doc to get the non-standard treatment. What does your Doc say now?

Marc,
Glad to hear your good news. I hope you are in the clear for good.
But if not. Have you looked into CimaVax, the promising lung cancer vaccine developed in Cuba?http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/cuban-lung-cancer-drug-giving-u-s-patients-hope/
As you may know, Cuba has single-payer health care and does an impressive level of drug research and development. You’ll have to travel to Cuba since our for-profit system isn’t going to let such an incredibly cheap and promising treatment into the US so easily. Good luck!

My condolences for your tribulations. If I was a cancer cell, I certainly wouldn’t pick the most dangerous mind on the Internet to f*&k with (nor would I if I were a lawyer. 😉 Best wishes to you always, you tenacious fighter…

Superb news! I hope congratulations will be the order of the day when you have scan results.

One word of caution – I believe there are SPECIFIC laws regarding making any claim of curing cancer.
Wording may become important (sorry if you’ve already given this due consideration).
Great to hear that your quality of life has improved so much, and outlook is optimistic.

I didn’t know you had cancer, and a very nasty sort at that. It is inspiring that you came up with an innovative approach to treatment, and (perhaps more so) got the medical establishment to go with it.

Indeed, your theory (and I sure hope it is right!) appears to be just the kind of thinking outside the box that makes for breakthroughs.

Frankly, I wish you had not posted this without confirming results. You have jinxed yourself. I have a relative with the same cancer, and was sent a text about hopeful news of improvement, shortly before becoming likely permanently hospitalized.

It’s the Varian Trilogy. It had setting for 9 and 15 million volts. I’ve also been exchanging email with Dr. Corey Zankowski who is very interested in the abscopal effect and wants to create some sort of template for partial radiation.

“One must not forget that recovery is brought about Not by the physician, but by the sick man himself. He heals Himself, by his own power, exactly as he walks by means of his own power, or eats, or thinks, breathes or sleeps.”

I also got immunotherapy drugs just before and then I insisted on partial tumor radiation and specified the size and shape of the treatment.

I’m getting another infusion today on the assumption there is still dead cancer and it needs to be boosted.

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